Tag Archives: oceania

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Aldi underpaid Sydney warehouse workers, judge finds

Aldi could be liable for millions of dollars in compensation after a Federal Court judge found the supermarket chain had underpaid warehouse workers.

The court has found Aldi breached employment laws by directing employees to begin work 15 minutes before their rostered starting time.

Workers at a Sydney distribution centre were required to undertake a number of tasks before clocking on, including completing safety checks on forklifts, checking communication devices and undertaking a group warm-up activity.

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Aldi claimed it was not underpaying its workers and that employees were only expected to be ready to commence work at the start of their rostered shifts.

But Judge Douglas Humphreys said he was satisfied there was a "clear implied direction" that employees had to arrive early and undertake those tasks, and that a consistent failure to comply would lead to disciplinary action.

"There was no personal benefit to the employee in the activities carried out. Each was to the benefit of the employer," he said in his findings.

"In these circumstances, the court is satisfied that the activities carried out constitute work."

The SDA retail and warehouse union claims Aldi owes its distribution centre workers up to $10 million in unpaid wages for working an extra 10 minutes per shift.

It says the decision could affect about 4000 current and former workers, a claim disputed by Aldi.

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The company said it respected the court's decision and was determining the payment owed to four employees directly impacted by the proceedings.

"We are reviewing the implication of the court's decision on other employees across our business and will seek to apply the principles of the court's decision fairly to any other affected employees," an Aldi spokesperson said on Wednesday.

"Numbers quoted by the SDA are significantly inflated and are not representative of the number of employees we believe may be impacted by the decision."

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Aldi supermarket Sydney

The SDA said it was still working through calculating individual back-pay amounts for its members.

"Aldi joins a long list of large employers found to have underpaid their workers," NSW branch secretary Bernie Smith said.

"Unlike the way the multinational likes to present itself in its advertisements, it turns out Aldi is not good and not different.

"Multinational companies operating in Australia can't set their own rules."

Humphreys is yet to make any orders regarding penalties. The parties are scheduled to return to court on Friday for a directions hearing.

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Accused Sydney axe killer was angry and jealous of wife's boyfriend

A jealous divorcee spied on his wife's new boyfriend with binoculars before deliberately running him down with his car and fatally chopping at his head with an axe, a jury has heard.

And the elderly man's subsequent excuses and stories to police and to the NSW Supreme Court in evidence should be rejected as they are contradictory and inherently implausible, the prosecutor said in her closing address on Wednesday.

There is no dispute that Cabramatta West man Thanh Tran, 79, repeatedly struck Pok Min Fah's head with the axe after hitting him with his car on March 14, 2019.

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Police took a 75-year-old man into custody and transported him to Fairfield Police Station.

Tran has pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter, arguing his judgment was substantially impaired due to a loss of control caused by trauma from his lived experience of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot's regime.

The Crown, however, contends that the angry older man was bitter his wife was divorcing him and had begun a new relationship with the 59-year-old and "forcing him to start a new life".

Married for more than 30 years, the couple had a strained relationship and were in effect separated with his wife sharing their daughter's bedroom for the last 15 years of their life together.

"After years of this unhappy marriage, she found someone that she wanted to start a new life," the Crown said, adding they shared a passion for singing.

Tran told his daughter that Fah was a bad person and destroyed his family, Nina Tran said in evidence.

But Tran later said he held no ill feelings towards the new partner and remained "neutral".

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The NSW Supreme Court in Sydney.

To police, he claimed he was acting in self-defence after the alleged assailant punched his head, and was forced to retrieve the axe from his car boot.

He then told a psychologist the man appeared threatening as he was carrying a ladder from his old home.

While Fah lay on the ground defenceless, Tran with force struck him more than 10 times at a fast pace with anger in his face, one witness wrote in a statement.

This caused bones inside his head to crack like an eggshell, and loosened parts of his fractured skull, amongst other severe injuries, the jury heard.

Tran explained in evidence that the axe was in the boot due to previous assaults, and the binoculars were kept in his car to watch soccer matches on a field.

The Crown rejected these assertions respectively as extraordinary and inherently implausible.

By the time Tran arrived in Australia his life was marked with such severe loss, trauma and grief, he suffered stress far greater than any local could ever conceive, his barrister Janet Manuell SC said.

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A NSW Ambulance attended the scene following reports one of the men was seriously injured.

After growing up in Cambodia a few kilometres away from the Vietnam border and the ravages of war, Tran was then marched about to various refugee camps, forced into labour from sunrise to sunset, and experienced "the disappearing" of about 16 family and friends, she said.

"How does any person deal with losses of that magnitude?"

The closing addresses continue.